Standards
A statement of what must hold, expressed as a floor. A standard states how its own conformance is determined — for some, conformance is decidable and the answer is the same whoever looks; for others it requires judgement, and a Verifier makes it.
A system declares the standards it holds itself to. Because every standard is a floor, they stack: wider layers first, then narrower, and an actor merges everything that applies to arrive at its set.
| Because a standard is a floor | |
|---|---|
| Merging is union | There is no precedence to define, no ordering to get wrong, and no conflict resolution to build |
| A layer may add or constrain, never contradict | A narrower layer contradicting a wider one is a defect to fix, not a conflict to arbitrate |
| A standard must be expressible as a floor | One written as a ceiling — "no more than…", "exactly…" — cannot stack, and so cannot take part |
A standard that cannot be met is not quietly dropped. It is conceded — recorded, scoped, and counted.
Determining conformance
You can check a written justification for presence, never for adequacy. That is the line the determination falls on: where conformance is decidable, the answer is the same whoever looks; where it needs judgement, a Verifier makes it.
A standard is not weakened by being checked by a person rather than a build. A standard a Verifier checks is not remembered — it sits in what the role must be able to reach, and is supplied at the moment of acting. That is the difference between a page and an input.
A standard is never re-decided per component. Whoever consumes an enforced standard made no choice and owes no record of one; the record justifying it exists once, where the standard is declared.
How a standard is declared
What form a standard takes is an application matter. The practice requires only that it is stated as a floor and says how its own conformance is determined.
An architecture decision record is one such form. It states what must hold and why, and the standard in force is what its un-superseded records say — so superseding one changes the standard rather than adding a second. Other systems will carry theirs as a linter configuration, a policy document, a contract, or an enforcing dependency. The practice names none of them.
Layers only ever add, so the merged set only ever grows. Left unattended it becomes large enough that roles start to be unholdable for ordinary work — and concessions flood at exactly the moment they should be quiet. Reviewing what each layer still requires is itself work, and has to be scheduled as such.